Monthly Archives: April 2015

Baltimore Police: On the Offensive or Defensive?[courtesy Google Images]

Earlier tonight (Tuesday, April 28th), the Washington Times published a “breaking news” article entitled “Baltimore protesters defy 10 p.m. curfew, remain in streets.” The headline is pretty much self-explanatory. The Baltimore city government issued a curfew that ordered the Baltimore people off the streets by 10PM. The rioters refused to obey. So far, the city couldn’t or wouldn’t enforce.

Now what? Will cops start to shoot rioters out after 10PM or will the rioters be emboldened by the city government’s inability to to enforce its order by more looting and setting fire to more stores?

Here’s a video of one skirmish between what may have been 30 to 50 Baltimore police and about 15 to 20 black teens. You’d think the cops could easily handle these teens, but the cops are on their good behavior and not shooting the rioters. The rioters are are throwing rocks, bottles and chunks of concrete. The cops are blocking the projectiles with their shields. Then the cops break ranks and make a “trot” for it to get out from under the flying rocks. (The cops would’ve made a “run” for it, but they were generally a little too fat to run, so they trotted.)

American Independence Hour hosted by Alfred Adask; 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM Central time, Tuesday nights, on AmericanVoiceRadio.com and also on the KU band, free-to-air satellite link at Galaxy 19. There’ll be call-ins at 1-855-566-3738.

I’m going to start this article with a definition: the term “gangsters” signifies a minority-group of people who believe they are so “special” that they are not subject to the law that applies to the majority. These “gangsters” often justify their exemption to the law of the majority based on claims of racism, injustice, poverty, or even necessity as in “my baby momma hungry, so I steal sumpin’.”

If it’s true that “gangsters” are minority groups who feel entitled and justified to be exempt from the law of the majority, aren’t the police, in particular, and government in general also “gangsters”?

Don’t the police enjoy immunities from legal liabilities that would get most people thrown in the slammer or even executed? Can’t the police get away with murder? With lying on the witness stand? With lying to suspects? To falsifying evidence? With initiating prosecutions against people for victimless crimes? With enforcing fictional jurisdictions?

The whole idea of a “police state” makes the police seem special and entitled to break the law. The American police state has been growing since the 9/11 attack in A.D. 2001 and subsequent enactment (without being read by Congress) of the “Patriot Act”. As a result of the “Patriot Act,” government in general and police have enjoyed new “immunities” for violating the law.

I agree. Janet Yellen may talk about possibly raising rates sometime this year, but it’s all smoke. According to Bove:

“Expectations that the Fed will raise rates in September or even June are off the mark. The dollar is simply too strong. It’s having a significant impact on the earnings of international companies across the board and it’s having an impact on the trade balance.”

“If the Fed were to raise rates, Bove believes the downward spiral would be severe. ‘Trade balance would grow more negative, international companies would lose money overseas, jobs would be lost in the U.S. and the growth of the economy in the U.S. would slow down.” Bove said all those scenarios are just too threatening given the fragile state of the recovery.

“Therefore he thinks the Fed will feel compelled to err on the side of caution and keep rates low. And Bove added, the Fed never thought it would have to keep rates so low for so long. ‘They thought they could turn interest rates on and off like a water spigot.’”

In fact, the Fed’s predicament may be much worse than an inability to raise interest rates in a fragile economy. Maybe the Fed has lost its powers to control the economy. Sure, the Fed still has a capacity to influence the economy—but its powers to control may have vanished.

The New York Times published,“Greece Flashes Warning Signal About Its Debt”:

“As Greece now gropes for a resolution to its current financial problems . . . Athens might still be holding out hope for a restructuring [defaulting on most] of its debt burden of 303 billion euros, or $327 billion.

“. . . the eurozone braced for the prospect of a default. . . . Repercussions of such a default are so difficult to predict that European officials have spent the last five years trying to avoid one.”

I agree that the “repercussions” of a Greek default are “hard to predict”. But that difficulty doesn’t necessarily mean that all of the possible outcomes of a Greek default would be catastrophic.

Most people assume that a Greek default could precipitate a Greek depression, EU depression or even a world depression. All of the possible repercussions seem grim, but could it be that this Greek tragedy is really a black comedy?

Over the past week or two we’ve seen that at least five Walmarts have closed for six months due to “plumbing problems”.

If the Hoover Dam broke, that might cause a “plumbing problem” that would take more than six months to fix

However, there are no plumbing problems in modern buildings that requires six months to repair. Modern contractors could easily bulldoze an entire Walmart store, rip the concrete slab and all the underground plumbing, and rebuild a new Walmart on the same site in less than six months.

More, Walmart is all about the money and stores closed for six months wouldn’t seem to make any money.

Thus, the “plumbing problem” excuse for store closings is clearly a blatant lie.

Given that Walmart has given its employees only a few hours notice that they would soon be unemployed, Walmart has created a serious public relations problem that won’t be easily forgotten or erased. Alienating the public to any degree has got to be bad for business. Walmart’s conduct has been so inexplicable and heavy-handed that I can’t imagine any modern, major corporation behaving with such indifference to the public–unless that corporation was under some powerful compulsion to do so.